I'm pretty sure the "+" in the comic refers to a simple concatenation of first initial and last name (e.g., <code>[email protected]</code>), not a literal <code>+</code> character (as in <code>[email protected]</code>). [[Special:Contributions/130.225.98.201|130.225.98.201]] 09:04, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Revision as of 09:04, 18 October 2013

My first attempt at an explanation. I have actually received emails designed for someone else because we had the same name and the sender missed a crucial difference between my email address and the intended recipient. Grahame (talk) 05:39, 18 October 2013 (UTC)Grahame

Good explanation, except gmail only allowes usernames between 6 and 30 characters (and doesn't allow + in username). I would assume that this was true even before this strip and it's not so hard to verify, so Randal probably speaks about addresses like [email protected] being mistakenly used by other Joe Smiths. -- Hkmaly (talk) 08:55, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't get this. When you're creating an account, every e-mail service provider checks to see if the username is available, and only lets you create an account if your username's unique. This kind of issue can happen if you then go around and enter a wrong e-mail ID whenever you sign up for something, or if the company automatically assumes an e-mail ID without asking you (I don't think the latter happens). It shouldn't matter if a provider (GMail for instance) ignores everything after a certain character (+) while determining recepient, or even if it ignores an entire character (.) - all this should've been taken care of when you signed up in the first place. 220.224.246.97 08:50, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

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